Nicole Richie turns Twitter hacker on celeb chums

Airhead socialite Nicole Richie broke into the Twitter account of her chums last week as part of a prank that proves just about anyone can become a password hacker.

Richie, best known for co-starring with Paris Hilton on The Simple Life, panned the updates of reality TV star Kim Kardashian and her boyfriend Joel Madden. Several million followers of these accounts were then fed risque tweets suggesting Kardashian might enjoy a spot of girl-on-girl with Ritchie.

Kardashian, who received some strange email via her BlackBerry as a result of the prank, subsequently posted a message on her blog letting interested parties know the two accounts had been hacked by Nicole Richie as part of an April Fool's joke. Richie had the help of Kardashian's sister Khloe in obtaining the password for her sibling's Twitter account.

Both parties to the rib-tickling social network shenanigans took the joke in good humour. More on the prank, including a list of the fake tweets, can be found in a blog entry by Sophos here.

The net security firm notes that the practice of breaking into the social networking accounts of friends has become widespread and far from restricted to celebrity pranksters. The tactic has even acquired a ugly moniker - fraped - a portmanteau of the words Facebook and raped. ®